What will you remember 2009 for?

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of new changes, fresh challenges and lots of spreadsheets! As well as working full time I’ve moved house and started to plan my wedding so it’s all systems go on every front.

There was good news for my mentee Sarah Hodges at the Communicators in Business (CiB) awards a couple of weeks ago as she scooped Newcomer of the Year. I’m thrilled for her as she’s worked incredibly hard and is a deserved winner. She has just sat her Diploma of Proficiency in Internal Communications exam so we have our fingers crossed the result will be a good one, which I’m confident it will be.

Work-wise I met up with Verity Lowe last week who is a fellow PR Week ‘29 under 29’. We met at the PR Week photo shoot a few months back and are looking at the possibility of media training.

My two placement students, Sarah and Aurore have been doing a sterling job conducting communication audits. I wanted to gauge perceptions and get even further behind our employee survey results. One particular survey they ran was a sheet with photographs of the Exec team on. They went to mess rooms and asked our frontline employees who they recognised. In my experience visibility of the senior management team is always a pretty standard question in employee surveys and usually rates among the highest areas of concern. So it is important to understand the reasons behind the results. The audit findings provided a couple of surprises and we’re putting plans in place to continue providing opportunities for employees to meet with the Executive team face-to-face.

Sarah and Aurore have also been doing a fantastic job planning our first long service event. It is taking place in January and we’ve set up the process from scratch to honour our employees who have served the railway for many years. I’m hoping this will be a milestone event in our calendar and am pleased with the work they have done to date.

It doesn’t seem possible that we are nearing the end of this year. For me personally it’s been one of change and transition as I’ve changed job and moved house twice. I created my tag cloud (pictured) based on some of the topics that have been part of my year. It’s certainly been one of big changes in the communications world with many seminars being held on the challenges of delivering value on a budget and credit crunch communications. How will you remember 2009? As the year social media moved from ‘out-there’ to ‘in-here’? Did you start blogging, tweeting and linking in? I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the best and worst aspects of corporate communication in 2009 and what you will associate with this year – do get in touch.